Time Heals All Wounds
by Bratanimus
Summary: Days pass. Kyo Ren tries not to think about the death of the man who fathered him. [Post-TFA, spoilers, character death.] Kylo Ren/Phasma, suggested unrequited Kylo Ren/Rey.


**DAY 2**

The second day after Han Solo bit the dust was not the time to think about it.

Snoke had ordered Hux to send a rescue team, and those anonymous white armored hands had lifted Kylo Ren up like a wounded animal that might bite, the shielded black eyes looking—or not looking—at his slashed face, at his blood dripping and steaming in the snow, as they hoisted him jerkily onto the sick bed before the ship took off.

Bacta tank nothingness healed the bolt and saber wounds and even the slash, more or less. As he floated, he felt as separate from his mind as his face had felt from the hand that had last touched it.

No matter. Vader had performed miracles despite grievous damage to his body. As would he. He would.

So many wrongs, and he would right them. Oh, yes.

 **DAY 7**

The seventh day after Han Solo kicked the bucket was not a good day to think about it, either.

Still there was the strange detachment, and Kylo Ren returned to his duties like a ghost, although his stalking footsteps sounded far too loud to his ears. Moving about felt like controlling someone else—something he did strangely well, and Snoke respected him for it, he did—controlling someone else, yes, but not feeling what he felt.

He told himself the hand was someone else's hand.

Probably that hand, and the body attached to it, had plummeted to the ground near the same snow where he'd bled before the base blew up. It would never know the process of withering and decaying, the offending calloused hand frozen in its final, pathetic grasp.

 **DAY 9**

The ninth day after Han Solo was killed wasn't the time for rumination at all.

He went to Phasma's quarters to see how she was faring. Her left arm had been crushed in the trash compactor, but she'd gotten out when the systems failed and stupidly refused the usual amputation and cybernetic prosthetic. Her arm was a bloody, mangled mess that the medic droids couldn't repair, and he had heroic thoughts about mending it, _thinking_ it well again. He could do that, certainly. He could fix something, couldn't he? He could do _anything_.

And so he did, and she screamed and screamed as the bones knitted, the dying flesh became revitalized and reborn, the ligaments attached with the elasticity of a newborn's, and she squeezed her eyes shut as he mounted her, allowing him on top for once, and she tore handfuls of his hair and he wanted to cry into her neck but she would laugh if he did, so he bit her healed shoulder hard until she came.

 **DAY 10**

Half a month was not enough time to process the death of a man who had fathered you, so he didn't bother trying.

He put the mask back on and tried to breathe, but it felt like being boiled inside a cooking pot. He ripped it off and struck it against the metal wall again and again and again. It would not shatter.

 **DAY 20**

Twenty days, and the deed was still done.

Under Snoke's rigid wing he continued his training. Snakes coiled in his mind and made themselves quite at home there, tying him back down so that he wouldn't float away.

 **DAY 35**

A month ago he'd killed him.

The men who'd rescued Kylo Ren, who had seen him at his most vulnerable, were all dead. Of course they had to die. Leave no trace.

Snoke was well pleased, and he felt glad. Didn't he? Master Luke had never pushed him this far, had never known what he could do, the things he was capable of. Foolish charlatan, he and the rest.

 **DAY 40?**

He'd lost track of time but woke up sobbing.

A confused wreck, he stumbled to Phasma's rooms. She refused him. They were calling her General now. Maybe she thought she was too good for him. Maybe she feared him, like the rest.

He stood in an airlock for two hours, wondering how quickly he'd die if he just…went out there.

 **DAY 53**

He timestamped his personal log with the date it happened, though the man didn't deserve it.

Vader's wasted mask looked so small, and still it wouldn't listen to him.

 **DAY 74**

 _Time heals all wounds and wounds all heels_ , his mother had liked to tell him. Which one was his father? A wound, or a heel?

 **DAY 93**

When he finally thought to ask and they told him, he didn't even remember killing General Hux the day after Han Solo died.

 **DAY 101**

It was nearly three months now, and Snoke finally insisted that his apprentice put his mask back on. It delivered a message, he reminded him. With the Order and the Republic in shambles and the Resistance in hiding, people needed familiarity, to be reminded of who they served and why.

As an imposter and interim space filler, he might as well. Han Solo had told him he was being used. Well, everyone had a purpose.

What Snoke really wanted now was the girl.

 **DAY 124**

There was no time anymore to think about Han Solo's death. He had a regime to rebuild.

But he thought about the girl, and how sweet her death would be, if he couldn't turn her. There was something about her he should know, and it rankled him that he could not place it. He told himself it must have been the massive presence of the Force in her, exploding as irrevocably as life itself. He remembered that glorious feeling when it happened to him, and when he remembered, he took his saber and destroyed his bedchamber.

 **DAY 178**

Han Solo had feared he couldn't understand his son.

Snoke was certain he understood Kylo Ren.

Idiots.

 **DAY 226**

His father had always been chatty, joked about being able to talk his way into and out of more trouble than—

Pointless to consider. But.

Ben hardly ever spoke. Kylo Ren, now only when he had to.

And Han Solo hadn't talked his way out of death.

 **DAY 331**

Anyone could die. Everyone would die.

 **DAY 360**

People from before had told him how much he looked like his mother, with her high cheekbones and dark eyes. Now the mirror— _his_ nose, _his_ chin—told him a different story. He lifted his hand to his face and could almost imagine someone else was touching it.

 **DAY 368**

One year.

Four Resistance fighters had been spotted on the outskirts of the sector. Three were killed and one captured.

There would be no thinking today. Only pain. Someone else's.

 **DAY 369**

It didn't matter what he'd gotten out of the pilot; they were no closer to finding the new Resistance base. Or Luke Skywalker. Or the girl.

Now Kylo Ren would not leave his quarters.

Once, he held the saber against his gut, his finger hovering over the activation.

 _We're not so different, you and me, kid_.

He could fix something, couldn't he? So many wrongs, and he would right them.

Yes.

 _Yes_.

But not today.

 **DAY 401**

More Resistance fighters bumping into their sector, some of them getting caught, some escaping. Rumors of a change in Leia's leadership and tactics. Silence, only silence about the girl and Luke.

How long had it been?

 _Ben_.

 **DAY 433**

He had to be stronger. If he could rip someone in half with his mind, if he could be that powerful, he might just throw the damned saber into the garbage chute. If he could destroy someone from halfway across the galaxy, then—

No. _No_. It had to be Leia. Not Snoke. Never him. He'd _made_ him, helped him create himself.

Cut off the head, the body will die.

The snakes held him down.

He was torn in two.

Vader just watched it happen.

 **DAY 458**

 _You're imagining things, kid_.

No, he wasn't. He could feel General Phasma's sneer under her helmet. Everyone mocked him behind his back. He'd let the droid go, after all, thinking the girl was enough.

 _Nothing's ever enough for you, Ben, that's the problem._

Except she might have been, if he could teach her, and he was nearly strong enough—but he'd lost her, too. No one would forget that, least of all him. And Supreme Leader Snoke never, ever forgot.

He imagined how he'd kill the general. He hoped he'd remember it this time.

 **DAY 470**

He ripped her in half, and knew he'd never forget it.

 **DAY 485**

He couldn't bother learning the next general's name. Names didn't matter.

Nor did bodies, or dwellings. He slept where it suited him. His hair hung in his eyes. The now too-large uniform and cloak remained unwashed.

 **DAY 493**

They tried to send him to the human physician for evaluation— _for your own good_ , they said. They never would have presumed to do that to Vader. He killed them. And the nameless general, too.

Maybe they'd leave him alone now.

 **DAY 502**

When the Resistance fighter broke and he found out where the girl had gone, all he could think of…

All he could think of…

 _Ben_.

Someone would have been proud of him. Wouldn't they.

 **DAY 520**

They traveled. Soon he'd have Skywalker and the girl, and everything would be all right. Snoke would not have her.

In the middle of the night he ripped the Supreme Leader in two. He saw it. Halfway across the galaxy, or wherever that creature was, no one would bring him back to life this time. After all, Kylo Ren hadn't brought back…hadn't…

 _Thank you_.

 **DAY 544**

The stones melted and the earth boiled under the Order's onslaught, and there she was, the girl, _Rey_ , if she still called herself that, in front of a copse of burning trees.

Fighting stance. Saber activated. Waiting for him.

She wielded a new saber, and her skills had improved. But he'd healed, had become stronger than anyone ever had been, or ever would be again. He reached out with his senses and knew another Jedi was near.

The blur of swordplay. Cat and mouse. He would almost smile, if he didn't know how it had to end. But then, just as he was about to do it—

He was in the center of three.

Rey.

Luke.

Leia.

 _No. No. Not her. I've already paid, I can't give, you can't have—_

But who was listening? Who did he want to hear him?

He thought about his father, and what he— _Ben_ —had done, all the things he'd done, and why, and for whom. It was all a mess. He was.

He ripped Skywalker in half as he raised his saber to run at Rey, turning his back on his mother's blaster, trusting her not to—no mother would—

In the end he was weak, just like his father.

And his mother, chest heaving with tears coursing down her cheeks like the day she'd sent him away to train, was the strong one and did what had to be done. So many wrongs, and he'd made sure that she, _she_ had to right them, no matter the cost.

 _Time heals all wounds_ , she'd lied.


End file.
